Tuesday, 27 September 2011

I had the somewhat misguided idea to show up for the Canada's Greatest Handyman Challenge a while back when it was in Halifax; and while I made it through to the second stage, I crashed and burned miserably. The lesson I learned was that I need the time to think an idea through and work out the technical challenges on my own timetable - stick a clock on me and a camera in my face and its a different story!!

This piece is about the project I built to get into the show, the only criteria was to build something portable from a single sheet of plywood. So me being me grabbed the challenge and used it as an opportuntity to do something very special. While plywood is not normally a fine material, I decided to use some cherry plywood I had in the shop, with the objective of making it not look like it was made from plywood.

The front carcase corners are mitred to hide the plywood edge - no edge banding allowed. Even the drawer sides are resawn from the same plywood to stay true to the rules of the contest. The top was a bit of a challenge, so to hide the edges, I mitred the three facing edges and turned it into itself to hide the edge. I was was very pleased with this and apparently so were the judges - enough said on that!

Once the sting of the experience passed I decided I wanted to use as much of this project as I could to avoid wasting all that work and material. This piece was to get a new drawer, drawer front, door front and top from solid cherry. I kept the design simple and was very pleased with the final outcome.

the design now has a decidedly shaker appearance and will serve very nicely as a nightstand in my No. 2 son's recently vacated bedroom.

Even though my TV days are over, I got to meet Mike Holmes, which was really my objective all along!!!!

Tuesday, 6 September 2011

The article I wrote for WoodTurning Online on the screwdrivers has been published. It can be viewed here. This article explains in lots of detail how I made these tools, including a couple of options to drill the holes and layout the blanks - Happy Turning.

Note: Read the article before you order the parts to make sure you get the right parts, others (me too) have ordered the wrong quantitites of the ferrules, so be careful.

Thursday, 1 September 2011

I have been turning wood into sawdust for over 25 years now and have gained some insight into how some things are done, now it is time to share.

For many years one of the resources I have used for new ideas and techniques is Wood Turning Online. They have hundreds of articles and project ideas which are put together by other woodworkers from around the world and shared through this site.

I was asked recently by the site operator to write a few articles for the site; the first one I put together was a simple lamination technique for turning pepper mills, which was published here. I have just finished writing another article on turning screwdriver handles which I blogged about here. It should be published soon.